Cricket is very very far from a niche sport. It’s one of the highest TV rated games (in terms of the number of people who watch it) in the world, iirc it’s 3rd behind football (the kind you play with your feet) and rugby. 20-20 cricket would be an interesting addition to the Olympics I think.
My understanding (garnered from sharing a house with 2 Indian students and talking about cultural differences quite frequently) is that cricket completely dominates the sporting culture of India. Kids all want to be Sachin Tendulkar when they grow up. The upshot of this is that very few are playing other sports at an early enough age to make Olympic standard, it’s unlikely they have school track teams as an example.
Sure, but cricket is limited to what, five major nations plus some small island countries? Rather like rugby and American football, lots of people watch but it isn’t diverse enough for the Olympics. If India, China and Bangladesh got all hot and bothered about hopscotch, you’d have a huge chunk of the world’s population interested but it wouldn’t be a diverse sport that the Olympics defines itself with.
England, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, France, Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Western Samoa, Japan, Canada, Italy, Tonga and Fiji… all quite heavily invested in rugby. It’s not exactly a niche sport.
It’s always seemed to me that India will never be the country that wins at the discus, but they’ll be the country that designs the better discus that flys 3 times farther than a regular one and that they’ll be pleased as punch about that fact.
As you might well know, Mohini Bhardwaj was the captain of the silver-medal-winning 2004 women’s gymnastics team, and received the “India Abroad Person of the Year” award as a result.
I’ll disagree with this. Olympic gold is widely recognized in India as the pinnacle of achievement in sports.
Government focus is definitely a factor. We don’t have a Chinese style government run sports machinery.
I was actually impressed to learn that we had 56 athletes representing India. That’s more than I expected, considering we didn’t qualify for Hockey (which is a team sport).
This year India has qualified for Archery, Athletics (Women’s 4 x 400m Relay, this was a surprise to me), Rowing, Sailing and Tennis.
A well organized sports program at the high school level is probably one of the primary reasons for the lack of world class athletes coming out of India.
Additionally, a typical high school student is exposed to just athletics, cricket and soccer while growing up. Tennis is still a rich person’s sport in India. Swimming requires access to a swimming pool (which is not common for the typical high school student). Other sports are not even really in the picture at the high school level.
I grew up playing soccer and tennis in high school at a competitive level. I realize now that the training I received was just nowhere near anything that is offered to high school students in the US.
Sports trainers across most sports (except Cricket, Tennis and Hockey) have no real experience at the world level. As a result, the training received by young athletes doesn’t compare with anything required to achieve success at the highest levels. Also, as a poor country, there is almost zero focus on nutrition/diet as a component of training.
Corruption is a big problem as well. Even making the teams that represent the country in various sports is mired in corruption and scandal.
Yes, even though Air Rifle shooting is an obscure sport in India, Bindra will come home as an instant celebrity and hero.
At the 2004 Athens Olympics, an Indian shooter, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, won a silver medal and the country went crazy about him (it was the highest individual medal we had ever received up until this year’s gold). He received India’s highest sporting honor from the Government. As an officer in the Army, he received an exceptional service award from the government usually given to officers at a much higher rank. He was also promoted as a result of his Olympic achievement.
Definitely. The problem is, they don’t really have any Indian athletes to cheer on at the world stage (except in Cricket and Tennis).
Indians are very tuned into worldwide sports, and are huge fans of sports in which India doesn’t play much (or any) part, including World and European Soccer, Formula 1, Tennis, Athletics, etc. Lewis Hamilton was surprised by the reception he got during a recent visit to India, saying he got a better fan reception in India than at most other places he’s been to.
Cricket was an Olympic sport. Once. In 1900. For 20 minutes. Literally
I’ll disagree with this. Women competing in sports is not considered a shame for the family. Some of our most recognized athletes have been women.
The bigger problem is making a career out of sports in India. Except for Cricket, and to some extent Tennis, you cannot make a career out of sports in India. Athletes and their families cannot afford giving up their education and career for full-time focus on their chosen sport.
Financing definitely has a lot to do with it. There is no infrastructure to support training athletes at the national level, and there is no money for the athletes to pursue sports as a full-time job. Also, with a well-functioning economy, there is a lot more incentive for athletes to just drop their sport and take up a regular day job instead.
Distance running in some African nations has the advantage of genes and history of success, and the economic benefit this would bring the athletes. This would make a focused effort more successful in those countries, especially when these programs are in part supported by former world and Olympic champions in these sports.
First ever individual gold medal.
India has won 8 Olympic gold medals in Hockey (along with 1 Silver and 2 Bronze). Apart from Hockey, we have 3 Bronze (Weightlifting, Tennis), one Silver (Shooting), and now one Gold (shooting).
Mostly true.
We do have school track teams, but the level of training is nowhere near what is available, for example, to athletes in the US. The 100m Men’s national record time is 10.3 seconds. You will notice that almost all Indian track athletes, including short distance sprinters, are of a lanky build, not the muscular upper-body build of Olympic 100m sprinters.
Now we’re bringing up the winter olympics? With only 80 countries instead of 192? Where the largest deligation, the US, was less than a third of the Chinese team for this summer’s games? C’mon, they’ve got like 7 sports in the winter olympics. You think up a better one and it might just replace curling.
It’s also quite popular in the Middle East, and in other European countries (such as the Netherlands), even if they’re kept out of the Five Nations Cup. During my rugby playing years, I also encountered touring teams from Malayasia and Hong Kong. I think I probably played about 30 or 40 different teams in or from the U.S., too. USA Rugby say that they have 75,000 members, with seven Territorial Unions (and four States that operate independently).
Well, since they field their own teams in most sports (though not track & field), I don’t see why that would happen to you. It’s not like we’re talking about whether they should get UN seats.
Where? Not at the Olympics. Should I say American football is played in the Pac-10, Big 12, ACC and SEC to somehow try and convince people that it has ‘world appeal’? It’s my favorite sport, but a world sport it ain’t. Just like rugby and cricket.
Yes, I was hoping to hide that Western Samoa and Tonga play it, because then everyone would see that rugby has global appeal and only the evil [insert non-rugby group here] conspiracy is keeping it out of the Olympics. Just like cricket and American football. I’ve been trying to keep people from knowing the truth, but you’re too tricky for me.
Beyond obviously universal stuff like track and field and swimming, what, exactly, would you consider a sport with “global appeal” to be?
You keep calling rugby a niche sport. Can you name ten, or even five team sports which are more popular globally?
ETA: I don’t give a crap if they make it an Olympic sport. Personally, I don’t think any non-classical sports should be in the Olympics. My motivation is curiosity alone.
Basketball, Hockey, Soccer/Football, Volleyball, Field Hockey, Baseball/Softball, Rowing, Polo, Sailing, Water Polo and Badminton. Plus there’s team versions of Tennis, Gymnastics, Swimming and Track.
Now tell me what countries have professional leagues for any of those sports.
Ice hockey is more or less unknown outside Northern and Eastern Europe and North America. Field hockey is played in most of the same places as rugby, plus South Asia (which also has rugby teams; they just aren’t good).
